Monday, 30 March 2015

Apparently national ice cream sandwich day 2015 is on August 2th. In my humble opinion, every day should be national ice cream sandwich day. Especially if the ice cream sandwiches are homemade with freshly baked cookies. Freshly baked soft and chewy funfetti and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that is.

This homemade ice cream sandwich project was a really special one. Lucy joined Victor and I on our Monday shooting/blogging adventure. Lucy did not come empty handed. She brought over a few pints of Earnest Ice Cream in the Tahitian vanilla and whiskey hazelnut flavours, cute outfits, and a whole collection of beautiful jewellery for our shoot. If you live in Vancouver, I am pretty sure you would have heard of/tried Earnest Ice Cream before. Their ice cream is some of the best and every little glass jar of ice cream starts with the use of local milk and whole food ingredients. Their flavours? All of them are completely amazing. My favourite are whiskey hazelnut and the matcha green tea.

To pair with the ice cream, I wanted cookies that were simple and would showcase and compliment the ice cream flavours. The whiskey hazelnut ice cream is paired with a simple soft and chewy funfetti cookie. I kind of like how the seemingly more adult ice cream flavour is paired with a playful and whimsical looking cookie adorned with rainbow sprinkles. The Tahitian vanilla ice cream is paired with my favourite chewy peanut butter cookie with a handful of marbled chocolate chips thrown in there. If you know me, I much prefer a soft and chewy cookie over a crispy cookie any day.

Taking photos of ice cream sandwiches is no simple task. It's messy, it's sticky, but completely worth it in the end. We took so many photos of the mis en place, the ice cream sandwiches, and behind the scenes styling that it took a solid hour or two for me to go through the batch Victor edited and sent over my way. I decided to divide up the batch of photos into two blog posts. This post will focus more on the making of the ice cream sandwiches and the recipes for them. The second post, which will be coming your way really soon, will focus more on the behind the scenes and styling shots. I am so excited for you to see all that we did that day!

For now, I hope you enjoy these cookies and ice cream sandwiches. If you think assembling them is too much of a hassle, just scoop out large scoops of ice cream into a bowl and have the cookies on the side. Just as delicious.

Soft and Chewy Funfetti Cookies

115g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature

150g (3/4 cup) granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

190g (1 1/2 cup) all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

3/4 cup sprinkles (Jimmies are better than nonpareils as they tend to 'bleed' less)

In a large bowl using stand mixer with paddle attachment or a hand-held mixer, cream the softened butter on medium speed. Add the sugar and continuing cream on medium speed until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla.

In a medium size bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cream of tartar. With the mixer running on low speed, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

Once combined, fold in 1/2 cup sprinkles.

Scoop two tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Repeat. Use the remaining 1/4 cup of sprinkles for pressing on top of rolled out cookie dough balls.

Chill the balls of dough on the cookie sheet for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator. This step will prevent the cookies from spreading too much in the oven.

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and bake chilled cookie dough for 8 - 9 minutes. The cookies will appear under-done and very soft. Allow the cookies to cool on the cookie sheets for 5 minutes before moving them to a wire rack.

Makes 14 - 16 large cookies.

Amy's Favourite Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

115g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature

100g (1/2 cup) packed brown sugar

50 g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar

185g (3/4 cup) peanut butter

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

160g (1 1/4 cup) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

In a large bowl using stand mixer with paddle attachment or a hand-held mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together on medium speed until well combined. Add the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla and beat until smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Turn the mixer to low and slowly pour in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Mix until combined and a dough is formed. Gently fold in chocolate chips.

Scoop two tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Repeat.

Chill the balls of dough on the cookie sheet for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator. This step will prevent the cookies from spreading too much in the oven.

Bake cookies on a baking tray lined with parchment, for 9 - 10 minutes or until very lightly browned on the sides. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack.

Makes 14 - 16 large cookies.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Cookies of your choice

Ice cream of your choice

Take ice cream out of the freezer and let it soften a little bit at room temperature, roughly ten to fifteen minutes. As ice cream is softening, take a baking tray or casserole dish and line with parchment paper. Spoon the soft ice cream into the baking tray lined with parchment paper and create one even surface of ice cream that is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick. Return ice cream to freezer and let ice cream firm up.

Once cookies have cooled (this is very important!) take the sheet of ice cream from the freezer and use a cookie cutter to cut out perfectly round discs of ice cream. Sandwich an ice cream disc between two cookies.

Alternatively, you can just spoon spoonfuls of ice cream between two cookies and skip the freezing and cookie cutter steps. You will have a more "rustic" looking ice cream sandwich. I like the clean lines the cookie cutters create. You can also roll the edges of the ice cream sandwiches in sprinkles or crushed nuts for extra fun.

I recommend assembling the ice cream sandwiches right before you eat them. You can freeze the ice cream sandwiches, but I think the cookies are better (aka softer and chewier) at room temperature.

Thursday, 19 March 2015

I don't really know where or how to begin this post. I feel like Victor did such an amazing job with the the photos that they really speak for themselves. I love working with Victor because we are both super chill, but still nit-picky enough when it comes to details and "styling." We also catch things the other person missed. I put styling in quotations because I don't think I am anywhere close to being in the realm of food styling - I just like getting fresh florals and arranging them in somewhat of a nice fashion. Victor, on the other hand, is a complete genius.

If you ever get your hands on my phone and decide to scroll through my Instagram feed, you will see that most of the people I follow are bakers and food bloggers. I have been seeing a lot of "Persian love cakes" and "Persian cookies" in my feed lately and was completely enamoured of the rosewater, pistachios, and spices combination.

This is the second cake I have ever really made in my life. Like a big, more-than-one-layer, maybe-I-can-give-it-to-you-for-your-birthday type of cake, this is my second one. I've made cupcakes, muffins, and brownies before, but nothing that required me to use a cake ring and acetate sheets. After I watched the 'Sweet' episode of Mind of a Chef, where Christina Tossi shows how she builds cakes to be super tall with a cake ring and acetate, I knew I had to give it a try. I wanted to channel my inner Christina and make a Momofuku-style Persian love cake.

I am also an avid follower of Katherine Sabbath. She is known for her extravagant layered cakes and has created a Persian love cake in the past. Since I am such an amateur in cake making, I knew I wanted to follow a trusted recipe and put my own little spin on it. So for the cake layers, I have for you an adapted version of Katherine's spiced caramel spiced mud cake. The rosewater cream cheese layers are made with my own recipe because...I'm a big fan of my cream cheese frosting recipe.

There are quite a few of steps to make and assemble this cake, but each step is really simple. It just takes some time, but is completely worth it in the end.

Pre-heat your oven to 325°F. Line the cake pan with parchment paper. My pan was 13 x 9 x 2. You can use whatever sized pan you like, you will just have to adjust for the baking temperature and your layer will be thinner/thicker than the ones pictured in the post.

Place butter, chocolate, sugar, water, maple syrup and vanilla extract in a saucepan. Stir ingredients over medium-low heat until chocolate melts and your mixture is smooth. Set aside for 30 mins to cool.

Transfer cooled mixture into the bowl of a standing mixer. Add the eggs, one at a time and beating well after each addition. Sift flour and spices over your chocolate mixture and mix until well combined. Add the almond meal and mix until well combined again.

Pour cake mixture into a pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (I recommend checking at 50 minutes). Let the cake stand for 20 mins before moving it onto a wire rack to cool.

While the cake is cooling, you can start making your rosewater cream cheese filling.

Once cake has completely cooled, use a cake ring and cut out three even layers. If your sheet of cake isn't large enough to cut three layers (which was my case!), use the Momofuku technique, where you cut out two nice cake layers and use the scraps to construct a bottom layer.

After cutting out the two nice cake layers, clean the cake ring and place it on a separate sheet of parchment paper atop a baking sheet or sturdy surface that you have no trouble moving around (you will need to move the constructed cake to the fridge or freezer later). Use a strip of acetate to line the inside of the cake ring. Put the cake scraps in the ring and use the cake soak to moisten the scraps so they easily form one flat even layer. Using a pastry brush for the cake soak makes this step a lot easier. It doesn't matter if your bottom layer is a bit messy and unkempt looking because no one will really see it.

*If you are unsure how to do this, The Baker Chick has a great tutorial on it!

After constructing the bottom layer, smother on a generous portion of the cream cheesing filling. Alternate between the cake layer, milk soak, cream cheese layers until you have a cake with three cake layers and three cream cheese layers.

Freeze the cake for at least 12 hours to set the cake and filling.

Three hours before serving, pull the pan from the freezer and pop the cake out of the cake ring. Carefully peel off the acetate and transfer the cake to a platter or cake stand. Let it defrost in the fridge for a minimum of 3 hours. Never peel off the acetate when the cake is no longer frozen, or else the cream cheese layers will get stuck to the acetate.

Decorate the cake however you like. I used a combination of whole and crushed meringues, dried rose petals, pistachios and white chocolate pieces.

Rosewater Cream Cheese Filling:

In a small bowl, beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, salt, food colouring and vanilla. Beat until smooth, then gently fold in whipped cream with a spatula.

Meringue Pebbles (make these the night before):

Preheat the oven to 200F and place a piece of parchment paper atop a baking sheet.

In a glass or metal bowl, whip egg whites until foamy using an electric mixer, adding the food colouring until desired colour is reached. Sprinkle in the powdered sugar a little at a time, while continuing to whip at medium speed. When the mixture becomes stiff and shiny, stop mixing, and transfer the mixture to a pastry bag. Pipe the meringue out onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 1.5 hours, turn off oven, and let meringues sit in the oven overnight if possible. Meringues should be dry to the touch and can be easily removed from baking sheet.

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

So how did this all start? I would be able to give you a more definite answer if you asked me where did this all start. Medina Cafe. My friend Victor and I were catching up over waffles and coffee at Medina Cafe when we started talking about my blog. You might remember my blog as a DIY/baking/hodge-podge blog. I have been wanting to redo my blog, get it a bit more organized, and make it a little more...me. I knew I wanted my first post on my "new" blog to be a recipe inspired by something meaningful. As Victor and I were nibbling away at our Belgian waffles, I dipped my waffle into more of the milk chocolate lavender sauce and thought to myself that milk chocolate lavender would be a great cookie flavour. Better yet, a milk chocolate lavender mocha flavour...just like one of their most popular drinks. I am also completely smitten by the white chocolate rosewater pistachio mocha Medina serves so why the heck not, I'll turn that into a cookie as well. So there you have it. My catching-up lunch date with Victor about my blog in cookie form.

I love simple shortbread and butter cookies and I have a go-to recipe for shortbread. Surprisingly, I did not use my go-to for these cookies. My go-to uses more butter and does not call for any eggs. This one does. A hard-boiled egg yolk actually. Cook's Illustrated and Smitten Kitchen both use a hard-boiled egg yolk in their French sable cookie recipe and I knew I wanted to give this technique a try. The hard-boiled egg yolk gives the cookies a more delicate crumb, and a texture is a bit more sandy than your usual shortbread. Shortbread and butter cookies are great to work with. They are like mini blank canvases, lending itself to any flavours you want to incorporate in them.

If you are an avid Bon Appetit hoarder reader like me, you might find these cookie wreaths to be a bit familiar-looking. The wreath idea comes from a San Francisco bakery that Bon Appetit featured in their last holiday issue and I have been wanting to create these delicate cookies since then. Theirs were adorned with entire flowers but I decided to top mine with the flavours emulating a lavender mocha and a rosewater white chocolate pistachio mocha. So I have here a mocha cookie with a coffee glaze with lavender and a simple butter cookie topped with a rosewater glaze, crushed pistachios, rose petals, and white chocolate bits.

Victor and I had a wonderful time shooting these cookies. We headed out early on a Monday morning to get fresh flowers and coffee, came back to my house, and started arranging all the flowers for the shoot. We shot the rosewater batch, proceeded to shoot the lavender batch, and wrapped up by creating the largest cookie photo spread. We had fresh florals, dried florals, and it was pretty much my cookie dream come true.

*Rosewater concentration may vary depending on the brand. I would highly recommend to taste as you go, to make sure you have the perfect balance of rosewater in your glaze. You don't want your cookies to taste like soap!

Place butter, sugar and salt in the bowl of stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Crack egg and peel shell. Separate yolk from white and set aside the egg white (you don't need it anymore). Press yolk through fine-mesh strainer and into mixer bowl with other ingredients. Beat mixture on medium speed until light and fluffy, scraping down sides of bowl and beater with spatula as needed. If you are making the rosewater variation, add the rosewater at this stage and mix until combined.

Add flour and mix at low speed until just combined. If you are making the mocha variation, whisk the cocoa powder and instant espresso powder with the flour before adding it to the butter mixture. If dough is slightly crumbly, use a rubber spatula or your hands to knead a few times and to combine the dough.

Place a piece of parchment paper on a flat surface, place dough on parchment, and place another piece of parchment on top. Using a rolling pin, roll our the dough into 1/4 inch thickness. Using a cookie cutter of your choice, cut out the shapes and place cookies onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Chill unbaked cookies for roughly 30 minutes before baking.

While dough is chilling, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Bake cookies until they have golden brown edges, about 13 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven but let firm up on baking sheet for 5-10 minutes before transferring cookies to cooling racks.

Make glaze, dip cookies, and decorate away. Dip the cookies in the glaze as you go along. Don't dip them all at once before decorating them because the glaze might set before you get to some of the cookies. Let glaze on cookies harden for about an hour before stacking/storing the cookies.